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The glitz and glam of the property market?

Image source: Homes of the Rich blog

It’s been
nearly a decade since the housing market crashed in the United States of
America and on the surface it seems like it has bounced back with new more
expensive zip codes. Even though the housing crisis crushed a lot of people’s
dreams of owning their own piece of land, it doesn’t seem to have affected the
uber-wealthy American.

Data provided
by Krishna Rao at Zillow’s breaks down the top 10 most expensive ZIP codes in
America. The majority of the highest-priced ZIP codes are within the bay areas.

The drive of
the median house price puts pressure on the standard household to enter the
property market and is widening the gap between the haves and the have nots. Even though the percentage of homes with a
value of $1 million -plus is small, it is still creating segregation within the
major cities.

At the other
end of the property market, the locations with the lowest housing values are in
the ‘hard-pressed’ and ‘crisis-ravaged’ areas of Memphis, Kansas City, Flint or
even Michigan. And let’s not forget the city of New Orleans, hit by hurricane
Katrina in 2005.

Image source: commons.trincoll.edu

Illustrating the big divide between
rich and poor, Zillow’s data shows just over a quarter of the ZIP codes (over
5000 of them) have median home values below $100,000.

So for those of you with a cool $4 million in your back pocket we thought you might be interested in what all that loose
change will buy you in the US compared with here at home.

Well, you could pick up this 1,300
square metre home with 6 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms set on 4 acres of landscaped
gardens in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

If you don’t like the sound of that
commute back to the office in Melbourne of Sydney, then you could get something
a bit closer to home like this relatively modest house in leafy Malvern,
Victoria. It only has 4 bedrooms and 4
bathrooms on about 900 square metres of land, but it has enough space to park
the SUV, and is within walking distance of fashionable High Street for spot of
shopping and a latte.

Image source:
realestate.com.au

Or if you work in Sydney, you could
snap up this cliff-top residence in Vaucluse.
It has 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms.
It’s not on its own estate but it has a great ocean view.